Natural Resources and Violent Conflict - WaterWiki.net

238 philippe le billon• An Interpol-sponsored regional meeting to exchange informationon trade patterns and suspected resource brokers and assistancemissions to relevant countries to effect potential UN Security Councilsanctions as well as a compensation scheme and buffer (Article 50, UNCharter)• Financial aid and technical assistance to targeted countries tofacilitate compliance with international certification schemes and SecurityCouncil resolutions• Criminal prosecution of sanctions busters using national and internationallegislation• Potential use of diplomacy, aid conditionality, and sanctions tocurtail the transit or importation of sanctioned resources.Unilateral and Regional Trade Sanctions. Individual countries andregional organizations have also imposed sanctions on commodityexports. In the United States, the federal administration, state governments,and even municipalities have imposed unilateral sanctionsagainst countries or individuals—sometimes with extraterritorial reach,as through the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (1996). Few of these sanctions,however, have been targeted at belligerents supported by resources. TheU.S. government imposed sanctions against Iraq immediately after itsinvasion of Kuwait. It also targeted the military regime in Myanmar in1995, through an investment moratorium affecting mostly U.S. energycompanies. But that measure fell short of requiring divestment or evendeterring reinvestment in existing projects. Because of growing anddiversifying international trade flows, unilateral sanctions—even thoseimposed by the United States—are unlikely to have a significant impacton conflict trade except, of course, if the target country is utterly dependenton the sender country for exploitation technology, transport infrastructure,or market.Regional organizations have also imposed commodity export sanctions.In Liberia, ECOWAS imposed economic sanctions on areas controlledby Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL)in 1993, after its military arm, the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECO-MOG), had organized a military blockade and takeover of Taylor’sleading port in Buchanan, from which the NPFL imported arms andexported iron ore, rubber, and timber (Atkinson 1997). The sanctionsregime suffered from the weakness of regional state institutions to performtheir regulatory functions (Aning 2002). Sanctions were also imposedon Burundi in 1996 by the Central African states, but this regimewas systematically violated not only by smugglers but also by participatingstates, allowing for the export of key commodities from Burundi,notably the smuggling of coffee (Mthembu-Salter 1999, pp. 18–19).